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The Crime of Curiosity

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Re: The Crime of Curiosity

#101

Post by hncircus »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #94
hncensors wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're saying that you support censorship if it fits with what the mods claim is "good discussion"? Do you also think YouTube should have pulled down the author's video? What are the acceptable reasons to enact censorship in your mind?

What was said: "I've seen mods allowing blatant rule violations because of good discussion" What was read: "I've seen mods censoring stuff because of good discussion". Sometimes you just want to give up.

This is a disingenuous representation of the parent comment. HN is clearly censoring content. They're not shy about it. I have no idea what position you're trying to take? That it's good they control the topics of conversation with an iron fist?

Re: The Crime of Curiosity

#102

Post by [deleted] »

phkahler wrote: post #9

>> monopoly speech platforms are also sloppily banning any form of science that doesn’t come from ‘ordained’ sources. It's not just that. The real message is that individuals are not able to make decisions or do things for themselves. This is why any medical treatment that doesn't involve surgery or prescriptions is thrown in with homeopathy and general quackery. It's not just companies either, individuals will look…

[deleted]

Re: The Crime of Curiosity

#103

Post by lolc »

nine_k wrote: post #36
donmcronald wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The potential costs of systemically removing correct but controversial/fringe content are extremely detrimental to scientific progress in general. I fall pretty strongly on the side of combatting misinformation, but I disagree with outright removal of content. I think it should be flagged as misinformation, but left available. Put another way, I'm a fan of labelling, not censoring. I want transparency. "Our misinfo…

Marking is helpful. Removal is not. Very much like spam: filters are good but not 100% good, so there must be a way to look at what the filter has rejected, and allow the reader to judge.

The mails that make it to your spambox are a pithy few compared to the mass of dropped mail. You'd be very unhappy with your spambox if the filters weren't so judgmental.

Re: The Crime of Curiosity

#104

Post by fxtentacle »

Wow this guy is ignorant. Not everyone who is intelligent is a good person. In fact, some people just like to see the world burn. It might only be 0.5% of the population, but I totally get why he's investigated all the time. Selling a kit that allows bacteria to grow where they normally don't just seems like an obviously bad idea to me, even if his science ambitions are good and noble. One can learn a lot about chemistry by synthesizing explosives, but selling a diy detonation kit (even for research and learning) still seems wrong. And the potential to accidentally harm others, for example but getting genetically modified organisms on your skin and then touching stuff seems even higher here.

Re: The Crime of Curiosity

#105

Post by dang »

hnisfullofshit wrote: post #48
reginold wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah the whole "censoring" stuff ratcheted up really fast. Kinda crazy.

HackerNews is notorious for censoring anything that falls outside its groupthink or threatens a portfolio company. It's actually one of the more aggressive censors on the internet. Case in point from this very thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28558254 There is no free speech here.

The comment was obviously trollish. Please stop creating accounts to break HN's rules with.

"Portfolio company" has nothing to do with how we moderate HN, except that we moderate less in such cases. Explained many times over the years: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu....

Re: The Crime of Curiosity

#106

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

kbenson wrote: post #99
analognoise wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you a censor if you own the platform? You can't come into my print shop and print Nazi literature. Could you print it yourself? Sure. So I'm not preventing you from printing it - I'm preventing you from printing it on my equipment. I.E - No, that's not censorship.

It is censorship, it's just that not all censorship is bad, and people should care more about the details than that the definition fits for a word they have knee-jerk reactions to.

"Censorship" always has a context.

When a government censors, it is (generally) saying "You may not say or print this in our society".

When a parent censors a child, they are generally saying "You may not say this within our family".

When a particular social group censors a member, they are saying "You cannot say this within our social group".

When a social media platform censors someone, they are saying "You may not say this (or anything else) on our platform".

One of these things is not like the others.

Re: The Crime of Curiosity

#107

Post by SoylentYellow »

reginold wrote: post #65
Barrin92 wrote: post #62

The author conflates two things. The right to biohack at home and Youtube's alleged obligation to let him broadcast his material. The first one is okay, as long as we're not talking about experiments that may be dangerous to the public. (which he seems to categorically reject for some reason, while home made bioterrorism is a real threat), the second one just doesn't follow at all. Youtube has no realistic way to tel…

Agreed - the lesson here is platforms like YouTube have a lot more control than most assume. An easy to use, censorship resistant, video host seems needed.

Locals.com is such a platform and Youtube's censorship (right or wrong) has significantly increased its popularity.

Re: The Crime of Curiosity

#108

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

thatcat wrote: post #93
frazbin wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I was with him up to that point. "None of the kits we sell contain anything dangerous, nor is the average person experimenting with biology inherently dangerous. If you are trying to engineer something hazardous — like say a bat virus — you might have a problem, but the genome search space is large enough that accidentally creating a harmful organism is astronomically improbable. Access to most dangerous materia…

Democratization of chem isn't responsible for the dispersal, the lack of regulation and proper labeling is. This occurs at the manufacture level not the level of research chemists.

If it turns out that SARS-COV-2 escaped from a lab, that will absolutely be at the level of research (bio)chemists.

The problem with individual biohacking is that there's not even oversight by colleagues. Maybe I'm overly optimistic, but I'd expect someone working near/with a biochemist who was doing crazy stuff to speak out about it. There's no real equivalent for this if the work is going on in somebody's basement or workshop.

Re: The Crime of Curiosity

#110

Post by satisfice »

fxtentacle wrote: post #104

Wow this guy is ignorant. Not everyone who is intelligent is a good person. In fact, some people just like to see the world burn. It might only be 0.5% of the population, but I totally get why he's investigated all the time. Selling a kit that allows bacteria to grow where they normally don't just seems like an obviously bad idea to me, even if his science ambitions are good and noble. One can learn a lot about chemi…

I spoke with an inventor, author of many books, and semi-famous Silicon Valley millionaire— whom I respect deeply— who told me that as a teenager he toured a Wunder Bread factory and saw how they used high heat to prevent mold or something. He decided to breed a temperature tolerant mold in his home and then see if he could spread it at the factory on another tour.

That’s curiosity and science, too.

Fortunately, he lost interest after having successfully bred the mold, and never carried the attack out. But you know what, I don’t want kids and sociopaths having easy access to biotech at home. Who knows what hacks will ensue that could devastate crops or economies. The OP says that is a small likelihood. The truth is he has no model that allows rational computation of the risk. The truth is he has faith.

The author of the post understands the practice of science but not the sociology of trust that goes with the community of scientists. I don’t care how safe he declares his ideas to be, it’s not in societies interest to have “Joe’s homemade injectable health serum. You can trust ol’ NASA Joe” available at every roadside stand.

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